


Aisha is the Object; Clay is the Subject

by Franzeska



Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Gen, Meta, Video essay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-07 22:53:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15917925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Franzeska/pseuds/Franzeska
Summary: How subjectivity is constructed in film and specifically in The Losers





	Aisha is the Object; Clay is the Subject

  


 

Films have a POV. It's subtler than in writing, and it works a little differently, but it's an element of any film or TV show, and it influences how we relate to the characters. In writing, it's obvious: which pronouns are used? In film, it's about which shots are used and what motivates cuts.

It's rare for a film to stick to a single character the entire time, while lots of books are written in first person or "close" limited third where _only_ things that one character knows can be in the narrative. In film, POV is about which character we are "with" emotionally, but it's common to cut away from them to foreshadow danger or set up comedy. In a book, omniscient digressions away from a character tend to distance us from that character. In film, we can cut away like this and still have an intimate connection to that character's emotions. 

A few films, like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, have voiceover and are overtly narrated by a specific character. The occasional wacky art film is shot from the literal POV of the main character as though their eyes are the camera, but most of the time, we expect to see our lead on screen. In this medium, if we can't see them, it's hard to relate to them.

## So how do we know who we're "with" in a typical film?

It's the character whose emotional perspective we are invited to share:

That doesn't mean they're a nice or good character or that all audience members like them the most, just that their interiority is prioritized. Compared to other characters they are highlighted in some combination of the following ways:

  * They have the most closeups and the closest closeups: 
    * The more clearly we see emotions on a face, the more we care about how that character is feeling. Closeups let us see emotions. They tell us that the _face_ is important, not what the character is physically doing or the location they're in. Often, a conversation between two characters will be shot mostly in medium CUs, but the editor will cut to a much closer CU of the POV character at key moments.
  * They have the most reaction shots:
    * When something important happens, we usually cut to this character to see the emotional impact. We may even cut to their reaction shot when another character is the one most affected.
  * They get in other characters' shots but not vice versa:
    * A standard conversation will often pair two over-the-shoulder (OTS) shots. Sometimes, it will pair a clean shot of the POV character with an OTS of the other character. This makes the POV character feel important and like they stand on their own. The other character is just the person they're listening to. The POV character encroaches on the other shot because they are more important.
  * Their eyeline is the closest to the camera:
    * A character in profile doesn't show us much of their emotions. A character looking very close to the camera (but not directly into the camera) shows us their whole face and we see their emotions very clearly. The 90° between these two points is a sliding scale from not intimate to very intimate. The audience is emotionally distanced from a character who is turned partly or completely away from the camera in most cases. (However, if we're _directly_ behind a character, watching their body language, it can feel intimate again.)
  * The camera follows the character:
    * This may mean some OTS shots of them or shots from behind as we enter a new scene, or it may mean establishing shots of them from the front. Either way, they're the person whom we've followed to the new location or new plot development.
  * The editing follows the character on a micro level:
    * First the character looks, then we cut to a POV shot of what they're seeing. It may be a literal POV shot (what their eyes would actually see, 1st person POV in a sense), or it may be an OTS (kind of a limited 3rd person POV). In conversations, the cuts between characters are often motivated by _both_ characters' eye movements. Character 1 looks. Cut to Character 2. Character 2 makes eye contact. Back to Character 1. The character who motivates this kind of cutting _most often_ is the one whose POV we're in. They are often also the character who _initiates_ the pattern.
  * The editing follows the character on a macro level:
    * The character motivates cuts from one scene to another. When they exit a scene (often at the moment their eyes leave the frame), we cut away to something else. They may make a decision, which we can see from their face in a closeup. As soon as their expression changes, they look away, they say "Okay", or some other signal like that, the scene ends.
  * Costume/light/blocking draw attention to them:
    * They are lit more brightly or wear lighter clothes. They are the only one moving or the only one still in the scene. Neurologically, the human eye is attracted to movement and to the brightest thing in the scene. Elements of lighting, costuming, and production design can make us look at one character more than another. A character's placement within the frame can also make us look at them. Unless there are clear signals that this is an object, rather than a subject, the character we spend a lot of time focusing on is usually the character we're "with".



## Why is this important?

In fandom, we talk a lot about which characters get fannish attention and which don't. There are many factors in play, but I think that film craft has a huge influence yet is mostly ignored. Many, many films are constructed _consciously_ to tell us that the male hero's feelings are important while the female love interest is an object to be looked at from the outside but not empathized with. This is not an accident: it is built into the cinematography and the editing. It is an _intentional choice_ on the part of the filmmakers.

 _The Losers_ is an excellent example. On paper, Aisha is an awesome badass. She has violent throwdowns with Clay where she is clearly his equal in combat, and they destroy a hotel room while writhing all over each other. I know plenty of fans who love this kind of het ship, _and_ it's canon, _and_ it features two very hot actors who are popular from other geeky media. I've seen a fair number of _requests_ for Aisha/Clay fanworks but few people making anything.

When I first watched The Losers, I was a huge fan of Zoe Saldana and not keen on Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Aisha is a type of character I adore, while Clay is not. So, at the time, I wasn't especially into Clay/Aisha, but I liked Aisha herself. Nonetheless, I found it hard to get into her head to write fic about her. (This isn't an OTP issue either or an excuse for why I won't write: I like and have written Aisha/Jensen.)

I think part of this is the subtle influence of how Aisha is positioned in the film. Even when she's having an awesome fight with Clay, we're still treated to him leering at her ass. Meanwhile, the only time Aisha objectifies _him_ is when she's feeling him up in the bar, and it's framed as him being the POV character and her being this weirdo who has turned up to bother him.

Even Aisha's big emotional moments, like her breaking down about her father, are shot and cut and framed as a big moment for _Clay_. When she rescues the team, the _emotional_ beat is Jensen thinking it's hot. None of her screen time is about _her_.

In the video above, I've analyzed most of the key scenes with Aisha and Clay to show how the film intentionally puts us in Clay's emotional perspective while distancing us from Aisha. I haven't included Roque in this video, but many of the same principles apply to him, minus the gratuitous ass shots. Both Aisha and Roque are positioned as attachments to Clay's plot in a way that Jensen, for example, is not.

In my experience, all ensemble action movies have this issue, even when they have great female characters. The only time it _doesn't_ happen is if a woman is definitively the lead and the _only_ lead. Ensemble shows have more time to develop multiple characters, so they may fare somewhat better, but this is still an insidious pattern. Directors and cinematographers are overwhelmingly male, even in TV, but especially for features. Even editors are mostly male, though the ratio is much better there.

Now, I'm not arguing that _The Losers_ should have been shot or cut differently. In this specific plot, Aisha is the dark horse outsider whose emotional experience is not supposed to be central to the film. Clay, for all that he's my least favorite of the team, is the team leader whose bad decisions drive the plot. The individual artistic decisions support those roles. The filmmakers accomplished what they set out to do.

What I _am_ saying is that this is a common pattern. My suspicion is that most of the single-perfect-tear male woobies that fandom loves _do_ have their interiority highlighted by the film craft. Meanwhile, most of the female characters with equivalent lines and screen time do _not_.

This isn't the case for something like, say, _Covert Affairs_ , where Annie was always clearly the lead. Some of the male characters got a lot of attention; some didn't. Annie was always front and center, whether in canon or in fandom. _The Spy Who Dumped Me_ is blatantly constructed as a female buddy movie with tacked-on male love interest. I suspect that analyzing the cutting pattern and cinematography there would show the exact reverse of the usual pattern. That guy is fun, but he's pretty much an appendage of the lead.

It's not impossible or even difficult to have media that is made differently. What concerns me is that it seems like the bulk of fannish activity in my fannish circles is over media like MCU films or Sherlock, which do follow this pattern. Yet we blame individual fic writers for not relating to the female characters, not writing enough het, not writing enough female-centric gen, etc.

I don't see any big movement to ditch these fandoms, just to complain about people writing the "wrong" fic. But it's only natural that many women find it hard to relate to these distanced, othered female characters who are constructed to lack subjectivity and interiority. Even vidding can be hard if too much of their footage is covered up by some dude's shoulder, but writing fic is particularly difficult because it requires you to get inside the character's head. Getting inside their heads is exactly what the source material is cueing you not to do.

Don't blame internalized misogyny. _Blame canon._


End file.
